Robert Fulford: The villainization of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In the early stages of the controversy over Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s cancelled honorary degree from Brandeis University, she looked like the victim. A survivor of Muslim oppression in her native Somalia, she’s an angry, influential critic of Islam. When Brandeis announced plans to honour her, students and Muslim organizations objected so passionately that the university cancelled her invitation.

Over her 10 years in the public eye, Somali-born women’s rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali has made no secret of her criticism of Islam.

In her bestselling memoir Infidel, she said the Koran gave Muslims “a legitimate basis” for domestic abuse and urged Westerners to stop kidding themselves “Islam is peace and tolerance.” In her 2010 follow-up, Nomad, also a bestseller, she wrote, “Islam is imbued with violence, and it encourages violence.”

Much of the commentary treated this decision as unfair, a case of a frightened university surrendering to political correctness. As Ruth Wisse, a distinguished Harvard professor, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “In Nigeria, Islamists think nothing of seizing hundreds of schoolgirls for the crime of aspiring to an education. Here in the United States, the educated class thinks nothing of denying an honorary degree to a fearless Muslim woman who at peril of her life, and in the name of liberal democracy, has insisted on exposing such outrages to the light.”

But lately, much of the discussion has turned against Hirsi Ali. She now stands accused of a crime against multiculturalism: She has failed to be moderate. She has overstated her case, possibly even made a mistake or two. She once called Islam “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.” She believes democracy and Islam are at war. No doubt about it, she’s not afraid to be harsh.

As a result, journalistic opinion has transformed her from victim to villain. The New Republic has said that her various statements are so extreme they make her unworthy of honour. Salon magazine argued that her view of Islam is the same as the bigotry that informs U.S. foreign policy. The Economist stated what it considers a rule: “Wholesale condemnations of existing religions just aren’t done in American politics.” Apparently they violate some sort of national code of ethics.

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Many in North America have come to believe that any criticism of Islam is inherently evil. But surely it is a sacred principle of the West that freedom of speech includes the freedom to discuss with frankness any religious authority or dogma. Democracy could not have developed beyond the medieval era without such criticism. Journalists now take it for granted that they can condemn the Roman Catholic Church for everything from tolerating child-abusing priests to denying the organized demands of nuns.

Artists in the West routinely scrutinize the history of Christianity and Judaism. Hilary Mantel has been justly acclaimed for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, two great historical novels about the blood-stained, deeply hypocritical creation of the Church of England under Henry VIII in the 16th century. It would be absurd for Anglicans to mount an attack on these books; but one could easily imagine that parallel discussions of Islamic history would be condemned as Islamophobic.

Much of the academic world seems to believe that anything said in criticism of Islam must be the result of ignorance or malice or both. A clear idea of the atmosphere in elite American universities comes through in a recent book, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?. The author, Lila Abu-Lughod, an anthropologist, has a PhD from Harvard and an appointment at Columbia as Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science. Harvard University Press published her book.

Abu-Lughod doesn’t think the veil oppresses women any more than “the tyranny of fashion” in the West

Despite her credentials, she gives a highly anecdotal and dubiously grounded answer to the question in her title: No, they don’t need to be saved. Their situation satisfies many of them. She quotes a woman who tells her that “You need a man who knows how to rule.” She explains that in many cases parents alone do not choose a girl’s husband; sometimes the girl is also consulted. She scorns the poignant stories of women who left Islam, calling them sordid and pornographic. She says Hirsi Ali’s own story, told in Infidel, follows the usual pattern.

And why, Abu-Lughod wants to know, are we so worried about human rights? She implies that emancipation, equality and rights are particular interests of the West, not so significant elsewhere. “The values of consent and choice” may be fetishes. She also thinks we write too much about honour killing. She believes that the West doesn’t understand communities that have a “commitment to honour.” She doesn’t think the veil oppresses women any more than “the tyranny of fashion” in the West.

Her book is worth noting as an example of an academic mentality that deadens and trivializes honest controversy. Immersion in the work of teachers such as Abu-Lughod warns students against defending the principles of their own society. It may explain why so few educated feminists show any interest in support for Muslim women.